With many products the price to the consumer is linked to its performance. For example a printer having a particular resolution or print speed generally costs less to buy than a printer having a higher resolution or print speed, all other things being the same. This is usually because the cost to the manufacturer of providing the better performance is greater than the cost of providing the lower performance. For example, a high resolution ink jet printer may have more nozzles in the printhead or more accurate control compared to a low resolution device; a high resolution laser printer may use toner having finer particles than a low resolution device. Current inkjet printers (most photocopiers are electro-photographic, and do not scan) utilize at least one device that scans or reciprocates across the width or length of the paper being printed or copied. This reciprocating motion generally places limits on the speed of printing or copying.
The current applicants have developed page width printheads that allow ink jet printing of a page to occur by moving a page past a fixed printhead. This removes one printing speed limitation and can increase the base level of performance. The speed of printing is then limited by factors such as speed of paper feed, the speed of the printer's electronics and the speed of the printhead itself.
There are many factors that limit the performance of a printer. An initial assumption is that all components of a device are designed for the particular performance of that device. However for a family of products this will result in many similar components. The savings of designing the components for each model may well be outweighed by the need to carry a much larger inventory, and other associated costs. As such a single component shared across a family of products may result in the lowest overall cost to the manufacturer. Where a single component is shared across a family of products, by necessity, it must be designed for the ‘high-end’ product. Accordingly it is under utilized in the ‘low-end’ products. Where only some components are shared across a family of devices the performance of the low end products may be limited by one or more other components that represent “bottle necks” in performance. Alternatively, the performance of the device may be artificially restricted. Performance may be artificially restricted even when one or more components limit performance.